Zero Woman 3 (Japan 1996)

Well, I finally tracked down the elusive "Zero Woman 3". Again I'm forced to question
my motives for watching this dreadful series, but luckily this one isn't too bad.
Poor Zero Woman (beautiful Kumiko Takeda) hates her job and wants to quit, but her
boss manages to convince her to do one more job. Like that ever works out.
Unfortunately for her, her targets know about Zero Division and hire their own assassin
to take her out. He's just about to do the deed when he comes to his senses and
realizes "hey, she's a babe - maybe I'll just sleep with her instead of killing her."
After this lurid little tryst, they meet up again, only this time he shoots her and
drags her back to his girlfriend's apartment to tend to her wounds. Hmmm, how
interesting. After recovering, she continues to track down her remaining targets
and the other assassin keeps trying to kill her, but after having had a taste of the
good stuff, he can't go through with it. After his
girlfriend gets kidnapped, the two assassins team up to kill all the bad guys and
save the girl. But naturally the film ends on a sour note as an even more pissed
and despondent Zero Woman leaves the final scene.

Apart from the original "Zero Woman",
this entry is probably the best in the series in terms of quality and content,
although that isn't saying much. The photography is downright awful. The skewed
angles are annoying and the entire video suffers from a bizarre strobing effect.
(unless this is the result of the video transfer?) The movie starts out promising,
but slows to an unbearable crawl about forty minutes in and doesn't pick up again
until the last ten minutes. The film could easily have forty-five minutes cut out
of it. But on the plus side, the production values are reasonable and Kumiko Takeda
is gorgeous. Like all good Zero Women, she's a mixture of fierce beauty, striking
confidence, unyielding defiance, emotional instability, and frail despondency.
She's a good actress and handles both her dramatic scenes and action scenes with equal
skill. The action scenes are bloody and fairly decent, and the sex scenes are kept
to a comfortable minimum.